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DAM revives a worthy offering

Skoglund's red eatery with foxes back

Top: Sandy Skoglund's "Fox Games," a large-scale installation acquired by the Denver Art Museum in 1991, is back on view in an ongoing exhibit. Left: Skoglund, left, supervises the reinstallation of the work in 2008. Assisting her were DAM employees Kevin Hester, center, and Francesca Fiorentino, right.
(Denver Art Museum Karl Gehring, The Denver Post
)

Splashy, well-marketed temporary exhibitions, especially ever-popular impressionist blockbusters, tend to get the most attention and draw the largest crowds at the Denver Art Museum.

But, sometimes, less-heralded, rotating offerings in the institution's permanent galleries can be every bit as compelling.

Take Sandy Skoglund's "Fox Games." The large-scale 1989 installation — a landmark work in the influential 62-year-old artist's career — is back on view for the first time in at least 15 years.

The piece was reinstalled last year as part of a total reconfiguration of the museum's modern and contemporary galleries on the third and fourth floors of the Hamilton Building, and it will remain on display indefinitely.

Hamilton Bldg. 3rd floor ( | Jeff Wells)

Suggesting the interior of a simple restaurant, it includes a chandelier, 10 tables, 20 bentwood chairs, 15 bread baskets and 124 rolls and bread sticks. All those elements, as well as the walls and the floor, are painted an intense, unrelenting red.

Providing the only break in color are 28 gray foxes cast in polyester resin in 11 or so repeated poses. They are frozen in action, jumping off the wall and scampering across or alighting on the tables.

Altogether, the work is a nonstop, eye-popping knockout.

"Fox Games" was originally exhibited in 1989 at the Centre Pompidou in Paris as part of a photography exhibition titled, "150 Years: The Invention of an Art.

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" It was created as a kind of reality-bending set for a complex photograph — the medium in which Skoglund is probably best known.

But after her use of the installation for that purpose, she revamped it, reversing the colors and giving it an identity of its own.

The work was first exhibited at the Denver Art Museum in 1990, and the institution acquired it a year later. In 1998, it toured nationally as part of a Skoglund retrospective, titled "Reality Under Siege."

One of the appealing aspects of many installations is that they can be reshaped to fit varying spaces, and the pieces often take on new life with each reinstallation.

That is certainly the case here. Although "Fox Games" was created long before the construction of the Hamilton Building, it looks as though it were intended for its present site — an odd, triangular space wrapped around an open staircase between the third and fourth floors.

"I couldn't imagine a more difficult space, underneath a staircase and with a wall that is slightly slanted," Skoglund said during a visit last year to oversee the work's display.

"But, in a really strange way, it works so well with the piece, because the piece is in a lot of ways very normal. There's a lot of grounded, very ordinary kinds of elements to it — salt and pepper shakers, tables and chairs.

"And yet there is some intrusion into the expectation of normalcy. So, in a way, the architectural strategy and the artistic strategy kind of come together in a very good way."

The re-emergence of this installation comes at a time of renewed interest in Skoglund's work, as evidenced by a solo exhibition on view in Venice and an accompanying book, titled "Sandy Skoglund: The Artificial Mirror."

The piece deals with many of the ongoing themes in her work: nature versus the growing encroachment of humanity, the seeming placidity of domesticity versus a more chaotic reality and simple notions of order versus and disorder.

The piece seems especially relevant now, given the ongoing controversy in Greenwood Village over human contacts with allegedly aggressive coyotes and the city's efforts to eradicate the critters.

"The Psychedelic Experience" ends Sunday, and no other major exhibitions will be shown at the Denver Art Museum until the opening of "Allen True's West" on Oct. 1.

But that doesn't mean there isn't anything different and exciting to take in. After all, when was the last time you saw 28 foxes cavorting on a vast sea of red?

"FOX GAMES."

Art. Denver Art Museum, West 13th Avenue between Broadway and Bannock Street. Sandy Skoglund's eye-popping, large- scale installation is back on view for the first time in more than 15 years. Ongoing. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays and Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Fridays and noon to 5 p.m. Sundays. Admission for Colorado residents: $10, $8 seniors and students and $3 youth 6-18 and free for children younger than 6. 720-865-5000 or denverartmuseum.org

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